CHAPTER XVI.

So many things which I want to tell happened in that year (1846) I can hardly decide on the thing to tell first. The Mexican war began, but no volunteers were called for in this region. Facilities for getting news were so poor that we didn't hear of a battle until it had been over for days. My father-in-law was quite well informed for that day, and something of a politician; he would get hold of a newspaper occasionally, and we all would gather around him eager to hear while he read the war news to us. I remember how he grieved when he heard of the death of Gen. Harden; he and Gen. Harden were friends in Illinois.

Stephen A. Douglas was beginning to be known through the country as a brilliant young and rising politician. Mr. Phillips knew him well, and used to regale us with stories of Douglas' smart sayings in debating societies and other occasions when he was a delicate stripling and a mechanic who made spinning-wheels in Jacksonville. Mr. Phillips admired Mr. Douglas and liked him, but would have liked him better if he had been a Whig. Mr. Phillips was a whig; and in the summer of '46 was a candidate on the whig ticket for Judge of Probate, but was defeated by John White. As there was no printing office anywhere in reach, the tickets had to be written. I think I wrote all the Whig tickets used in the county at that election. I became very tired of that monotonous work, but my father-in-law kept me at it for three or four days, and wouldn't allow me to stop until I had written Whig tickets all over one side of about a quire of foolscap paper. After I was supposed to have written enough I cut them all apart and did them up in packages to be sent out to all the voting places in the county. All that work was gratuitous, such a thing as remuneration never entering my mind; and to think that after all that writing, and writing, and writing whig tickets, my father-in-law was beaten. John White, the successful candidate, lived about a mile southwest of town. In 1853 Judge White was thrown from a sulky or gig, and his leg was broken. A day or two after, Dr. Hopkins amputated it and he died in two or three days after the operation.

In the Spring of 1846 there was a great exodus of Mormons from Nauvoo, Illinois. Their Prophet, Joseph Smith, was killed in '44 by a mob, and the whole set were ordered to leave the State. They were given time to dispose of their effects and pack up and go to some other country. Some of their shrewd and wise ones had discovered a country beautiful and productive away to the southwest, where they supposed they could go and settle and live and practice their peculiar religious rites without being disturbed by the laws of any State. So in the Spring of '46 they made a grand rush for what they called the "Promised Land." For weeks in that Spring and early Summer, train after train of those people with their white covered wagons could be seen slowly wending their way along the lane by my father-in-law's house and through Oskaloosa. If one chanced to- speak to one of them they didn't seem at all inclined to be sociable, but were uncommunicative, sullen and morose. They often bought corn of Mr. Phillips, but were not inclined to talk only of the business in hand. "They were seeking a country" where, when they reached it, "they builded better than they knew. "

One rainy, muddy evening in that Spring a colony of Swedes, about fifty in number, came driving up and wanted shelter. They were a forlorn-looking set, and some of them were sick. Not one could speak a word of English, except a man who was conducting them to their destination, and another young man who was fine-looking and had princely manners. He had golden hair and complexion like a girl, was tall, straight and dignified and looked like a lord among a lot of beggars. The man who was conductor and interpreter informed us that this lordly-looking young man belonged to a Swedish family of wealth and high social standing, who had come to America with the rest on a tour of inspection. Mr. Phillips had a large barn lust finished, where all those people slept that night except one woman who was sick. Mr. Phillips had a hadsome three-year-old filly, and in the morning that lordly-looking young man got his eye on her and proposed to purchase her. When Mr. Phillips told him he could have her for fifty dollars he just handed him fifty dollars in bright gold pieces, mounted his filly and rode off, Those people, I heard, settled somewhere northwest of what was then called Ft. Des Moines. They were the first Swedes I ever saw. I have a pretty good opinion of Swedes and Norwegians, but have not forgotten my first experience with them, and the time we had cleaning out the mud after that set had gone.

One of the prominent events of that Summer was the land sales, which occurred on the Fourth of July. Almost every man who owned a claim had a sack of silver coin buried or hidden in some way under their puncheon floors. How carefully they watched over and kept their little hoard. Some actually denied themselves and families what now would be called the necessaries of life, in order to keep intact that little hoard. They knew to a cent just how much it contained, and knew that on that they were dependent for food, raiment and shelter; or at least for the land on which to produce those things. I have known families to deny themselves flour, sugar and coffee rather than break in on that bag of silver under the floor. It was going to take just so much to enter their land, and that amount must be kept intact whether they had biscuit and coffee or not.

So on the morning of the third of July nearly all the men in the south part of Mahaska County dug up their precious hidden treasures and started for Fairfleld. The most of the men in Oskaloosa went whether they were going to enter land or not. Claim laws were in vogue, and every man carried a stout hickory club to defend himself and neighbors against over-bidders. My father-in-law went and entered between three hundred and four hundred acres lying along the east side of Oskaloosa. That land extended nearly as far south as the Rock Island depot and north almost to Spring Creek. What is generally thought to be the most beautiful part of Oskaloosa is on that land.

My husband's claim was eighty acres: the north forty of that eighty is now Forest Cemetery. My husband had done the amount of work required on his claim in order to preempt, so he preempted his eighty, and the next year exactly to a day went to Fairfield and entered it at a dollar and a quarter an acre. He borrowed the money from the school fund commissioner, paying ten per cent interest on the same, and in addition to the one hundred dollars which was necessary to secure the eighty acres, he was compelled to borrow five dollars more to pay his expenses in making the trip to the land office. Money then was scarce and hard to obtain; people managed to live by trading one commodity for another. Nearly all the money in the country was paid out for land to the government, and that had not been in circulation. The money obtained from the sale of sixteenth sections went into the school fund and was loaned out, there being no regulations for a long time to use it for school purposes. I used to hear it said that the sixteenth sections nearly always happened to be valuable land.

The first school whose teachers were paid with money drawn from the school fund was taught in the two-story brick school-house called "Gospel Ridge" school, in 1855. The first man elected as principal was a Mr. Goshorn, who died soon after accepting the position. He died in a house which stood on the southwest corner
of First Avenue and Seventh Street, where Esquire Weaver lives. James Loughridge was the next principal.

In 1855 Mr. Phillips, my father-in-law, had one hundred acres of land fenced and in cultivation: an immense staked and ridered fence enclosed the whole of it. A wide lane called the "Fairfield Road" divided it in about equal portions. My husband, his brother Wat and a hired man made all those rails, hauled them out and built that fence, high enough and strong enough to keep out any prairie-breaking team, no matter how breachy. That hired man came to Mr. Phillips in the Spring of '45 and offered to do any kind of work on the farm for his board and washing and seven dollars a month in cash. Mr. Phillips hired him and kept him several months; the family used to say they never saw a better worker nor a more honorable man. The most of that hundred acres was broken in '44 and was just right for a crop in '45, which was a good season. The weather was favorable for early planting in the Spring, the Summer had just enough of rain, and frost stayed away long enough in the Fall for corn and everything else to mature.

The Phillipses had an immense crop of corn, acres in shock and thousands of bushels in great high rail pens. It was easy to raise corn then twice plowing was sufficient. The ground was new and rich and mellow, with not a weed to be seen; there were no weeds here to speak of for three or four years. I used to pine for the sight of a plaintain or a dandelion, and if I had come across a sprig of dog fennel by the roadside I think I would have gotten down and worshiped it. My heart fairly leaped with joy when I first saw a little patch of blue grass and white clover. But before many years the streets in the little town of Oskaloosa were bordered with as luxuriant a growth of smartweed and dog fennel as I had been accustomed to seeing in the little townsin the old "Hoosier State." In 1846 there was another bountiful crop raised of corn and wheat and oats, and such gardens and melons and pumpkins! There were few cattle and hogs to eat the corn, and no market to speak of where that great amount of stuff could be turned into money. My father-in-law kept what was called a wagon yard, and disposed of some of his surplus corn and oats to travelers, but much of it was wasted.

When I drive about the outskirts of Oskaloosa now, and see boys by the dozen engaged in weeding onions in immense gardens, I think of a time when acres of onions could have been raised by merely leveling the ground and sowing the seed. No boys were needed to pull weeds; there would have been nothing but the clean ground, and every individual onion standing out and spreading itself. Wouldn't John Knight and the Kembles think they had a bonanza if their ground was like that now? I don't mean to say that the ground is not rich to-day, for it is, but weeds will grow.

Gorrell and I expected to go to housekeeping in the Spring, but father Phillips persuaded us to wait till Fall, when his barn would have been finished, the crop secured, and the boys, Gorrell and Watt, could then build us a little log house on our eighty acre claim. We all got along nicely at father Phillips', but how we did look forward to the time when we would have a home of our own. We knew our home would have to be very scantily furnished, but we didn't mind that; homes generally in those days were humble and scantily furnished. Neither of us had ever been accustomed to luxuries, and were content to begin in a very humble way. We were young then, and full of hope and energy; the world was before us, and we bad each other. We would often walk down and look over the ground, and finally selected the spot where our house was to be built. The place we selected was not a wise choice, though it was the prettiest place in all the country a charming body of timber to the north, the ground sloping to the east and to the west a little clear brook at the foot of that western slope, and over the hill a stretch of prairie and groves which at sunset was like a picture. To the south was a view of open prairie, and we could stand on that spot and see all over the little town of Oskaloosa. After that big barn was finished, the corn laid by, the wheat and oats stacked and the prairie hay cut and put in the barn, Gorrell and Wat went down into the timber and cut and hewed logs for our house. Wat was a natural mechanic and could do almost anything in the construction of a house as crude as that. Wat made the shingles to cover it, by hand. That house was a little more pretentious than many at that time, as it had a shingled roof and a brick chimney. R. R. Harbour built the chimney, which was a good one, had a nice fireplace and did not smoke. The floor, too, was made of plank instead of puncheon. Some saw-mills had by that time been built about through the country and a rough kind of lumber could be obtained. Our floor was of green oak plank just laid down without nailing. There was a door in the south and.one in the north, one window in the south of nine panes of glass. There were cracks between the logs, but Gorrell fitted in pieces of wood to fill them up, then got sand and lime and made mortar and plastered the cracks over until the wall was quite smooth and tight. I said that Gorrell did that plastering, but will take that back, as I did part of it myself. I was so much interested in the building of that house I would go and look on and watch the progress of things, and when he commenced putting-on that mortar, I as usual was hanging around. No one was there but ourselves, as I proposed to help him. He made some objection, but I persisted, took up the trowel and commenced laying on the mortar. I found it such delightful work that I just kept on, and wouldn't let him have the trowel, but kept calling out "more" until I had plastered as high as I could reach. We didn't suppose there was a human being in a half mile of us, when suddenly we heard a horse's hoofs, and on looking around we beheld John White sitting on his horse, whose head was fairly inside the door. "Hello!" said Mr. White, and seeing me with trowel in hand, wanted to know if I was helping to build the house, said he had thought all along that Gorrell had done well in marrying, but didn't imagine I was a housebuilder, with all my other qualifications. He must have noticed our embarrassment, which instead of making him change the subject, led him on more and more in his quizzing remarks.

I went down the branch below Mosier's spring and dug some white clay out of the bank and made a whitewash and applied it to the walls of my little log house, which made it as white as snow. I did that whitewashing before we moved into the house. When that white clay first came out of the bank it was almost as hard as rock, but a few days' soaking in water reduced it to the proper consistency, One day I went alone to that little new house and applied that solution to the walls as high up as I could reach when standing on the floor, then I made a scaffold of the logs which had been sawed out to make the doors, climbed up on it and finished it to the (I was going to say "ceiling," but there was no ceiling, only joists between the floor and roof), but I whitewashed to the top of the logs. It soon dried, and looked so white and clean, and I felt so proud of my work I just stood and gazed and admired, and kept thinking, "Won't Gorrell think this is nice?" The next day I took him down to look at it. Gorrell always praised anything I did, and when I showed him those white walls he couldn't say enough nice things. He would look around the room; and then look at me and break out with more praises.

On the 14th of October, 1846, we moved into our little new cabin home. Though we had so few of what are called the necessaries of life, and none of what could by any means be considered luxuries, I think we were as happy as any young husband and wife ever were, even if started out in life surrounded with elegant home and elegant appointments. I discovered long ago that happiness does not depend on fine houses, fine furniture nor fine clothes. It didn't take us long to arrange our furniture; we had no carpet to tack down, but I did wish I had a strip or two of rag carpet. We set our bed up, which was quite respectable-looking, with nice pillows and patch-work quilt, and a clean, starched calico valence, which stood out all around the bottom like a ruffle. There was a great deal of room under a bed in those days. It was a good thing, too, that that style prevailed, for many unsightly things could be tucked under the bed and hidden by the valence. We learned in those days how to utilize room, and boxes and bundles could be stored away under the bed. Our cupboard consisted of some shelves without a door; there were strips to hold the plates up at the back of the shelves. I had some very pretty plates and didn't fail to set every individual plate so it would show to the best advantage; my cups and saucers, too, were made to show their best. I did have some pretty cups and saucers, and I am sure I would think them pretty to-day. They were decorated and had handles, were a mulberry color and a pretty shape. I had a set of knives and forks of which I was very proud. The handles were made of buck's horn, were of irregular shape, no two having the same curve. I think I was more anxious to have a respectable table than I was about any other detail of housekeeping. A box with curtain in front served the joint purpose of kitchen table and pot closet. I cooked by the fireplace, which was nothing new to me, as I was raised that way. When we commenced honsekeeping we found ourselves without many things which seemed to be necessary. I had no rolling-pin at first, but had immense ears of corn, so I rolled my biscuit out with an ear of corn. I can shut my eyes now and see the prints of the grains in the dough. I did my washing at first in a dishpan and bucket; we carried water up that long slope from the little brook, but with it all we managed to be quite comfortable; we were well and strong and not afraid of work. The future looked bright, and we had no heartaches or fears about making a living. We were so satisfied with each other that it required but little besides to make us happy.

Our house was located just where the prairie and timber meet. The woods back of our house was a dense forest almost unbroken to Skunk River. We used to hear wolves howl at night, but never thought of being afraid of them. I never heard of them attacking anybody about here. I was more afraid of snakes than anything else. I killed many a rattlesnake about on that ridge. One day as I was going out of the back door a rattlesnake was crawling toward the house and not more than two feet away from the door. It coiled and rattled - that sound always so terrifying. I would have killed it myself if nobody had been there but me, but Gorrell was and he put a quietus on it. It was nothing unusual then to hear of snakes crawling into people's cabins, but I never heard of anyone being bitten around here by snakes crawling into their houses. I heard of a few out on the prairie being bitten, but of only one person dying from rattlesnake bite in this part of Iowa, and that was a Mrs. Gray, in Harrison township. A little McAllister girl was bitten on the foot by a rattlesnake in the Loughridge neighborhood in 1844. Her people applied such remedies as they had at hand, but before Dr. Hobbs got there she was unconscious and badly swollen. He saved her life by wrapping her from head to foot in a poultice made of corn meal and cold water. The poultice was changed often and the child got well and is living to-day. Dr. Hobbs told me about it himself. The subject of snakes is not a pleasant subject to write about, nor talk about, nor think about, but as they played a conspicuous part in the early settling of this country, I thought it proper to make some mention of them.

Wild turkeys were thick about in the woods and sometimes would come close to our house. We had a pen of corn out by the stable, and one day when I was alone I heard that peculiar sound which turkeys make. I opened the door gently and on looking out I beheld that corn pen covered with turkeys and about a dozen others walking about on the ground. I stood still and watched them a little while before they discovered me, but when they did get a glimpse of me they hied themselves off down through the grove. Quails were plentiful about in the woods and groves. One flock in particular made their headquarters about our corn pen that first Fall. Gorrell made a trap and first and last caught the whole flock, numbering sixteen. I don't think a flock of quails ever behaved as satisfactorily to their captors as that flock did. There were always two, and never more than three, found in that trap at one time. Gorrell and I always had each a quail. If there were three I generally gave Gorrell the extra one, though he would insist on dividing.

Our cooking utensils consisted of a tea kettle, a coffee pot, a skillet and a kettle, which answered the purpose of boiling, baking, stewing and roasting. We didn't have a great variety of things to cook, but the corn bread I used to bake in that skillet would make a Kentuckian's mouth water to-day. No corn bread in these days baked in any of the modern ranges is half so good as that baked in a skillet by an old-fashioned fireplace. We used to think a dinner without corn bread was not a dinner at all. Dyspepsia and indigestion were words which very few people knew the meaning of in '46 - I mean Mahaska people. Some words which were in common use and perfectly well understood by every man, woman and child in this region in '46 are fast becoming obsolete, or going into desuetude. For instance: "Egg bread," "light pone," "johnnycake," "hoe cake," "lye hominy." Not long ago a gentleman asked me what kind of a plant hominy grew on, and was it cultivated in this country?

Oskaloosa to-day can boast of many institutions never dreamed of by her inhabitants in '46. Among them a society or organization whose object is to look after and relieve the city's poor, who are supposed to be worthy of benevolent consideration. This society is managed by the women of the city. A committee from each ward looks after the wants of its respective ward. My friend, Miss Leoni McMillen, being one of a committee, when on a tour of investigation came upon a family who had applied for help. Miss McMillen inquired into their needs, when the woman of the house informed her that they wanted some first-class canned peaches, some oranges, raisins, granulated sugar, coffee and tea, porterhouse steak and a sack of flour-she preferred "Pillsbury's Best." After Miss McMillen had taken her order for the foregoing articles she suggested that she send them some corn meal, when the woman informed her that her family couldn't eat corn bread. "Can't eat corn bread!" Miss McMillen exclaimed in indignant astonishment. "Madam, I want to say to you that the bone and sinew of this country were raised on corn bread, and if you can't eat corn bread now, you had better go hungry until you can eat it. Can't eat corn bread! Why, the men who fought to save our country were glad to get corn bread."